Bitrix Provides Robust Intranet with Social Components
by Bill Ives
Bitrix is a Russian company with a US presence that offers a number of enterprise products built on their Bitrix Framework. These include Bitrix SaaS, Bitrix Site Manager, and Bitrix Intranet Portal. I recently spoke with Stephen Ankenman and Denis Zenkin about their intranet offering. It is a robust platform of enterprise collaboration and content management that operates within an enterprise 2.0 paradigm with excellent transparency. They now have over 40,000 business users that run their intranets and websites with the Bitrix platform.
Stephen walked me through many of the features of the Intranet Portal. The dashboard is very configurable at both the individual and admin levels. You can add widgets linking to both consumer Web sites like ESPN and to internal content sources like employee profiles. The admin can select how much flexibility is available. There is a very clear interface. You can see a sample dashboard below.
Finding other employees is augmented through Active Directory and Outlook integration. Whenever an employee is connected to an item, you see the employee profile with the ability to start internal IM style chats and video chats. The IM chats are archived for future access. This is a great feature as most IM conversations are simply lost.
There are a number of capabilities that align with business functions. One of my favorites is the ability to create business process workflows. You can set up a visualization of the work process and include requirements such as multiple approval levels. It is important for enterprise 2.0 platforms to align with business processes and not simply be a utility. This feature address that need. You can see a sample process creation below.
You can also set up visualizations of your organizational structure with the robust profiles placed within each chart. Below is a sample chart.
You can set up groups for a variety of functions such as putting access parameters on a discussion or managing a project. Much of the functionality can be deployed at the corporate level and the group level. This includes calendaring as shown below. File sharing also operates this way as you can use the group function to control access to certain documents. Forums can be within a group or across the enterprise. You can participate in forums through email.
Tasks are another business focused capability and task assignment allows for transparent progress to be available to the group members in the spirit of enterprise 2.0 The Bitrix Intranet Portal is designed to manage a business, making essential content available at the right levels. Stephen said that many of their clients are moving to a collaborative platform for the first time. I can see how they find Bitrix both easy to use and align with their work requirements.
